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I have a weird question....

I

IH farmer

New User
I am good at coming up with weird questions. My question is approx. how many miles is on a 4500 hour tractor. Thanks
 
wow thats a tough one, just as a guess, if it was a tillage tractor and not spent its life running an auger ect, i"d guess an average of 3 mph x 4500 hours = 13,500 miles. i dunno, just a guess
 
It could vary a whole lot depending on what it did. field work often is done at 4-6 mph but on a blower or a feed wagon or a pump its going to go very few miles. If you are trying to compare hours to a truck's miles, I would figure roughly 600,000 ave. for a truck before it may be looking at a major overhaul. So if you figure ave speed 50 mph for an OTR truck that would equate to 12,000 hours. So at 4500 hours that tractor is only one third used up.
 
It would be hard to tell "miles" on any tractor based on hours alone. Was it used for alot of stationary work with only the PTO engaged, was it driven with the RPM's up, in first gear all the time pulling a plow or disc, or was it driven alot between fields doing nothing but mowing, etc, etc, etc. There are way too many variables to even begin to give even a close estimate on the miles driven on a tractor unless it had an odometer installed from the factory or you had way more information to use to make an estimate. Things like how much stationary time, how far to the field, what gear it was run in most of the time, etc, etc, etc, etc, Just for the sake of an answer like your looking for, and estimating no stationary time at all, just multiply MPH times the hours. At 20MPH it would be 90,000 miles at 10MPH it would be 45,000 miles, at 5MPH it would be 22,500 miles.....
 
Several years ago someone posted a comment here that said that the Onan generator company had a guideline that hours * 41 = equivalent miles of wear. So your 4500 hour tractor would be wore out about the same as a car with 184,500 miles on it. As for miles covered, I would guess that my tractor"s average speed has been around 3 or 4 mph.
 
Consider a gas automobile can travel 200,000 miles (not the Detroit ones) without major repairs if maintained properly (this has been my experience). At 60 mi / hr (I'm mostly highway) that comes to 3,333 hours. On the other hand, many tractors can get 6,000 to 10,000 hours without major breakdowns. So this is comparing apples and oranges. Assuming your tractor is good for 10,000 hrs, I'd say it is at half life, or at about the 100,000 mile mark of an auto.
 
You pressed a hot button. I've put over 200K trouble-free miles on NUMEROUS GM cars/engines.

You can keep your foreign stuff.


Glenn F.
 
226K on a Dodge Stratus, transmission failed, so we got rid of it.
247K on a Ford F-150, my daily driver
185K on a Ford Ranger, still going strong
196K on a Ford E-150 van, engine removed for another project
130K on a Chrysler 300M (that's our "new" car)

I've owned imports, but only my Volvo ever got close to those numbers.
 
I think if I was tofigure out an average speed for my tractors most would hit around 5 mph on average. That's for no reason other than that's where I do most of my field work (5-6 mph). There's some slower and there's some faster and there's some stationary work... so I'd think that 5 mph would be a fair average speed over their lifetime.
That would equate to 22,500 miles in 4500 hours.

Rod
 
I work at a GM dealer and have yet to see that !!! You must of got one of the few good ones ?
 
Engine life is roughly rated to its power output during its life so some kind of hp/ci/hr relationship probably exists.

Basically more hp per cubic inch, the less hours the engine is gonna hold together for, unless its operated at low power levels most of the time.
 
I have a customer with a legitimate 552000 miles on an 88 Olds with a 3.8 engine, has never had a wrench to the engine except water pump, I have his records since 1990 when I started working on the car, hard to match that with any foreign vehicles. There are good and bad in everything.
 
I put 300,000 miles on a 1984 toyota pickup. Timing chain/water pump every 115,000. 1 alternator. That being said, I've known lots of people with the GM 3.8 that have 200,000 + on them. One guy had one in a toronado, had over 400,000 miles on it.
 
IHF,
Lots of hour meters are tied to tach speed; run tractor at rated speed and 1hr run= 1hr on meter. Now check your car/truck speedometer against its tach in a 1to1 gear. My truck runs 60 mph at 2100 rpm in 4th (5th is overdrive) and tractor rated at 2100, so my estimate would be 270,000 miles. This seems more reasonable to me than the 20,000 mile estimates at least for for engine "miles". Now plow an 80 acre 1/2 mile long field with a 2 bottom plow, my best guess for this would be around 250 miles and about 160 hrs.
 
I have a cat motor with 1,600,000 miles with 44000 hours 600,000 on overhaul average 36.6mph must have sat alot idling or alot of city driveing.A lot of newer cars have average speed of less then 40mph. city driving lowers average alot. If you compare to a car the RPM your tractor runs you could maybe be close to 18000 car miles on your tractor. If you want actual tractor miles you would have to know your average speed.
 

I never had a complaint on the GM engines or the high mileage i always got but the ones we owned in the 60's,70's and 80's all the headliners fell on our heads, the door handles broke off on the inside and the sun visors broke. rust like you wouldn't believe. The worst was a 74 gmc PU and a 82 Chevy van.
 
If you assume the average speed of a car is 40mph...

40 mph * 4500 hours = 180,000 miles

Or are you trying see how far you've driven your tractor? I would assume 4mph, although it's pointless... that's why they have hour meters...

4 mph * 4500 hours = 18,000 miles
 
How about oil leaks ? or intake leaks ? water pumps ? alternators ? and all the little stuff.
 
I Know of $hitloads of guys that have over 200,000 miles on a car or truck.
It all comes down to how well was the car/truck taken care of.
 
Come on now ? Never a wrench on the engine. So if I was to believe this then you still have the original spark plugs in it as it takes a wrench/ratchet and socket to remove them. Not to mention those do have timing chain & tensioner and cam sensor magnet falling out issues.
But that era of the 3.8 was one of the best.
 

That's pretty impressive. Over 16,000 hours on a rebuild. What tells you it needs a rebuild? Smoke, oil pressure, power? And how many miles till you figure you have to trash it and get a new one?
 
If it's a 4500 hour FARM tractor, probably about 20,000 miles. If it worked for the highways or some city about one quarter that. I am surprised that on this forum nobody told you to get a manual and figure it out.
 
Wifes Buick is right at 225000, never had anything other than normal wear and tear items repalced, brakes, tires, wheel bearings, etc...I do think the plugs and wires were changed once a couple of years back, but other than that, its never been touched, same alt. and waterpump.
 
We need to bring "closure" to all this. Your 4,500 hour tractor has 13,245.6 miles. Period. Let's move on. Please ask me what weight oil to use in the transmission of a Land Dominator 2000 tractor, so we can segue to another topic.
 
I know of an old Case tractor that did nothing but run a water pump for 8 hours a day for three years. So, it had 8760 hours on it and 0 miles.
 
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